14
I am here, I am everywhere
We are not in the business of destroying I-sense; we are in the business of liberating it from constraint.
If you hang out much around the spiritual water cooler, you hear talk about “getting rid of ‘I’” or “getting rid of ego.” Sometimes you can develop the idea that you are supposed to be floating around in a pink cloud of referenceless oneness. Some traditions hold this View, but in direct realization traditions, we are not trying to get rid of “I”; we are trying to free it from karmic conditioning.
A fundamental principle of reality is that it is simple and unified. Particular expressions of reality achieve diversity through processes of contraction and expansion. For instance, let’s say I am a person who is always giving time and energy to my friends even when they don’t want me to. I give because I desperately want people to be generous to me. I am trying to manipulate people into feeling that they need me and owe me.
I could also be someone who wants the world to be a better place to live. I give my time and energy to working for nonprofit organizations. But I have a very strong attachment to achieving specific outcomes with my giving. When circumstances don’t go my way, I become angry and upset.
Finally, I could be a person who enjoys giving and who also has the clarity to be able to give skillfully. I understand that the outcomes of my giving are not up to me. I am just one factor, but I happily give anyway.
Each of these scenarios invokes the cosmic wisdom virtue of generosity. In the first scenario, “generosity” is under a lot of tension. The wisdom of generosity is shining through a dirty window we call karmic conditioning. The analogy that is used in the tradition is of the sun. The sun is always shining at full strength, but if there are clouds in the way, or dirt on the window, then the pattern of light changes, and the strength of the light is diminished.
Karma is patterns of consciousness and energy moving with momentum through time. The way that wisdom virtues show up in particular circumstances is shaped or colored by karma, until we are realized, that is. But the wisdom virtues are still shining like the sun.
In the second scenario, there is less obscuring karmic vision. This person is looking outward, and their field of concern is larger than the first person’s. The pattern of karmic vision allows in a little more light. But generosity is still operating under tension.
The third situation is good, healthy, ordinary generosity. Wisdom is not too constricted or obscured.
Reality works the same way all the way through. There is no fundamental difference between expanded and contracted, heaven and earth, or wise and ignorant. Apparent differences are manifested along a continuum via varying degrees of limitation.
How do we apply this principle to I-sense, or self-awareness? Reality itself is self-aware; I-sense is pervasive. A famous Sanskrit mantra expresses this: Aham. The mantra means “I am.” Aham is the cosmic “I am” that is being announced throughout every nook and cranny of manifest life.
Our gnarly, selfish, self-protective ego is that cosmic Aham under karmic tension. The same “I” principle, or self-awareness, operates at every level of life, but sometimes it is unable to fully express itself because of karmic obscurations. Insentience manifests when Aham is totally obscured, as in, for example, a toaster.
Our job as practitioners is to do sadhana and relax our karmic tensions. This process allows wisdom virtues to express more fully in and as us. Sadhana is actually a subtractive process. We are not cultivating wisdom, or transforming consciousness. Wisdom is already perfect and fully present. We are just cleaning the window, or blowing away the clouds. Then the small, cloudy self gladly rediscovers its identity with the sunlit I AM of all of creation.
15
Unmind the mind
That which arises, these appearings, come and go ceaselessly, and so the accomplished person remains undisturbed.
Spiritual traditions from various parts of the world place a great value on leaving behind impermanence and ascending to a heaven where everything supposedly remains unchanged for all eternity. In orthodox Hindu and Buddhist traditions, this emphasis sometimes finds expression in the valorization of other kinds of cessation of movement. There may be an emphasis on heroic feats such as stopping one’s thoughts or one’s breath; controlling the emission of sexual fluids; or externally remaining in a frozen, insensible, “spiritual” condition. People are admonished to close off, control, and chastise the senses. This View can also manifest as the desire to designate and then achieve a final spiritual accomplishment such as immortality or a light body.
Practitioners of Trika Shaivism hold the View that creating displays of phenomenal worlds is the natural life process of God. Producing endless experiences of diversity is what God does, and this production never ceases entirely. Essence nature, the eternal, remains unaffected by the comings and goings of impermanence just as a mirror is unaffected by the reflections that appear in it. Yet the natural state of existence is not frozen. The alive quality of the base state could be described as a dynamic stillness.
Within the various Tantrik traditions, diversity and the continuous production of experiences of diversity are celebrated. And since God continually accomplishes its own nature everywhere, there is no place to escape to where the display of impermanence ceases. For a practitioner in a direct realization tradition, there is nothing to do but to discover how to remain undistracted, resting in one’s own nature, while all of this apparent activity continues.
Wherever you go, to this world or some other, whatever body you inhabit, that of a human, an angel, or a siddha, you will still be in the midst of life. More importantly, since God is delighting in the creation, so must we as we wake up. Self-realization means being free of conditioning and enjoying the display of impermanence. My Dzogchen teacher Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche often summarizes the path and its fruit by saying: “We realize and we enjoy.” The 14th century Maharastrian poet Jñanadeva expresses this beautifully.
The yoga that is attained by the yogis through the means like restraining the senses is as lustreless before this path as the moon is by day. There is no action or inaction, and everything goes on as the experience of the Atman. The non-dual one enters of his own accord the courtyard of duality. And the unity deepens along with the growth of difference.6
Why restrain the senses when they are God’s gateways for experiencing? Why leave duality when one can deepen the experience of unity here and also enjoy the astounding display of difference, of the multiplicity?
A common notion is that spiritual practice requires strict control of or monitoring of the mind. In the direct realization traditions, it is taught that one must “unmind the mind.” Just as thorough realization means remaining undistracted by life’s comings and goings, so we must also remain undistracted by what is happening in our minds.
Thoughts are patterned energy. The treasury of karmas stored in the mind is deep and fathomless. We may succeed in quieting our minds, or even experience periods of the cessation of gross thoughts. But so what? Untold vritti, or mind patterns, remain bubbling just below the surface. No one can control the mind in all circumstances, or for very long, or much at all if we account for the subtle vritti and not just gross thoughts. Sadhana does unwind karmic conditioning, including conditioned thought patterns, but it can never rid us of thoughts. Mind continues to do what mind does.
Realization means the ability to rest in your own nature in all circumstances, even unpleasant or difficult or busy circumstances. There is always a wiggle, always some disturbance in the world that might distract us. The only refuge is to discover living presence and integrate with that rather than running distractedly after what comes and goes, including the mind.
Thoughts arise, enjoy a life cycle, and then subside. Traffic continues to jam the roads. Neighbors argue. Children fall ill. Accidents are sudden. Storms rage. Wars erupt. Planets and entire universes blink in and out of existence. The question is not how can we get ri
d of disturbances, but how will we live at peace with it all.
16
There is no emptiness
Emptiness is an experience that serves as a gateway to recognizing the fullness of presence.
Emptiness may be one of the most misunderstood spiritual teachings of all time. This is not the fault of students. Teachers often misunderstand teachings about emptiness, or they have only received relative teachings on emptiness. Even when teachers do have a thorough understanding, they often hold back on mentioning that emptiness is a relative teaching, not a fundamental of the base state.
One time I was attending a Dzogchen teaching. The teacher whispered under his breath, “There is no such thing as emptiness.” I waited eagerly for him to continue. I thought that finally the secret would be dragged out into the open! But he just continued teaching about emptiness in an ordinary, relative way.
When you do consistent spiritual practice, your limited concepts of body, energy, mind, and world begin to fall away. Shunya, or the experience of emptiness, is ushered in by the shock of recognizing that your ideas about life are not so incontrovertible, reliable, or solid as you had previously assumed. This introduces you to the experience of a void. You start to have experiences of free fall, of no ground. This is the real nature of the famed emptiness.
Shunya can also be like falling out of love. Everything feels flat and dull and pointless because you are no longer filling yourself with inflated ideas and emotions. You just can’t get so worked up about yourself or the world anymore. But eventually you begin to perceive the more subtle beauty and possibilities in your new, less secure, less overwrought situation.
A student once announced her discovery that she has no soul. She was quite excited about this! Previous to studying in our tradition, she had cultivated the idea that inside of her fleshly body was something like a spiritual mini-me. This made her feel full and safe and important.
When she did enough practice, she discovered that body is not different from “spirit” and that even solid objects, such as her body, are more subtle than she had imagined. So she experienced a kind of relative emptiness.
Emptiness, or shunya, can take many forms. It can feel scary or exhilarating or both. The experience is definitely destabilizing. The bottom line is the recognition that manifestations of essence are provisional and ephemeral in substance and duration. These phenomena include our self-concepts, our beliefs, our cherished habits, our bodies, other beings, and worlds. We begin to feel and understand that the people, things, ideas, and circumstances we cling to so earnestly and deem to be so incredibly important are players in a fleeting, improvisational dance. As the famous Buddhist saying goes: “The bad news is you are falling. The good news is, there is no ground.”
Weirdly, emptiness can be like a drug. One can get attached to the experience of emptiness, particularly if it is valorized by your teachers and traditions. The feeling of relative spaciousness can be quite pleasurable.
People can also become stuck in a kind of negative, grieving relationship to emptiness, especially if the experience is still somewhat conceptual, and you have not let go entirely. If you have what is called hungry ghost karmic vision, you have a habit of being attached to feelings of loss. So you may get mired in a kind of mournful relationship to the idea of shunya.
Concepts of emptiness can also become weapons brandished in a kind of gleefully bitter way. This is a form of spiritual bypassing. You wag the admonishing finger of emptiness when you think you perceive people being too attached to their concepts and habits. This creates a paradoxical situation in which you have made emptiness your new secure ground in a competitive sort of way.
In the best circumstance, shunya is a recalibration. Your entire sensorium has to become accustomed to a new perceptual situation. After what may be an initial period of feelings of destabilization and loss, shunya can usher in a refreshing lightness of being and willingness to explore and play with reality in a less earnest way.
In some traditions, the experience of emptiness, or shunya, is considered to be the final realization. Sutrayana Buddhist traditions hold that emptiness is the base state. This is their experience based on their practice. This is not true, however, for the practices of Trika Shaivism, Vajrayana, or Dzogchen. For direct realization traditions, the experience of shunya is only half-way there.
If you manage to deeply let go, if you look deeply into emptiness with your body, energy, and mind, what you discover is the fullness of living presence. Purna Brahma Narayani is a Sanskrit phrase that expresses the real nature of the base state: full of wisdom and creative energy. Passing through the gateway of shunya, you discover that there is not a single speck of emptiness anywhere.
17
Impermanence is the glamour of God
From the perspective of the realized self, the experience of impermanence is fundamentally enjoyable.
Impermanence is the experience of things coming and going. Some spiritual traditions deem impermanent manifestations, such as bodies and earthly life, to be degraded, lower, or lesser than in comparison to what does not come and go. Ephemerality is often spoken of in mournful tones and equated with suffering and being tricked.
If we think about it for a minute, there is nothing that necessarily links impermanence with degradation. Impermanence is just a natural fact of manifest life. Only a kind of religious-cultural bias links impermanence, bodies, and earthly life with unreality or degradation.
In the Abrahamic traditions, the fall of Adam and Eve into impermanence ushers in the state of sinfulness among humankind. In some Buddhist traditions, impermanence is equated with suffering or is charged with creating suffering simply by dint of being transitory.
In the View of Trika, Shakti continually excites Shiva to overflow with the creation. Shiva-Shakti produces the manifest out of the pure joy of self-expression. Manifest life is sometimes referred to in orgasmic terms as the “emission.” There is no sense of degradation or sinfulness. Manifest life is a celebration of the nature of the Ultimate. Our job is to remember that and end our ignorance. Ignorance of the real nature of things is suffering, not sin.
While the experience of suffering is real, and we have to deal with it, we are already enjoying impermanence. To the extent that we are able to appreciate impermanence, we are being more like the awake Self.
We enjoy the turning of the leaves in fall. We enjoy yearning for an absent loved one. We enjoy watching our children and ourselves change over time. The feeling of loss itself can have a strong component of enjoyment. The short and fragile lives of butterflies fill us with wonder.
We also appreciate violent destruction. We love to watch buildings being demolished. We’re fascinated by storms. When bombings, tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanoes occur, we feel a mixture of fascination, awe, exhilaration, fright, and sadness. Our entire movie and gaming industries are largely built on our enjoyment of and fascination with destruction.
Some cultures have deeper understandings of our real relationship to impermanence. Japanese artisans create ceramic bowls and vases with cracks that are lovingly filled with gold. The cracks remind us of the impermanence of all objects. The gold draws our attention to the beauty of impermanence and our poignant attempts to thwart it.
The culture of Chinese Daoism encourages the cultivation and enjoyment of nostalgia: a gentle yet not unpainful mourning of missed opportunities, things past, and people who are out of reach. Many poems, paintings, and musical compositions from the Chinese Daoist tradition celebrate nostalgia. Nostalgia, in this context, is a vehicle for contemplating impermanence and enjoying it.
The root of generosity is that something is here rather than nothing. From the perspective of Trika Shaivism, the continual upsurge of infinite, impermanent manifestations is an expression of the generosity of God. In the Trika tradition, impermanent life is referred to as the “ornament” or “glamour” of God. Glamour is an ancient word for magic and magical spells as well as for beautiful adornment.
This Being is called Lord Śiva. He is the essence and existence of all beings. The external objective world is the expansion of His Power and it is filled with the glamour of the glory of God Consciousness.
— Abhinavagupta7
One time, years ago, my Buddhist roommate was doing her preliminary practices (ngondro). She had to make something like 300,000 offerings of the Vajra Guru mantra and rice. Along with the rice, she mixed in some sparkly coins and gems. Every few weeks after making her daily offerings, she had collected a large bowl of offered rice out of which were emerging the half-buried, colorful, shining objects.
I thought that my roommate’s bowl of offerings was a perfect symbol of our circumstance. The rice was unconditioned Shiva Nature. The gems and coins partially emerging from that were our glamorous, diverse worlds. The whole was a single continuity.
Impermanence is not something we are trying to escape; it is made of God. Impermanence is God overflowing with the bliss of self-expression. When we stop suffering, we can remain and enjoy everything. We can be more like Shiva.
18
The whole of life is the means of realizing the Self
Everything here is a reflection of essence nature, and so we use our ordinary experience to walk backward out of conditioning and realize the Self.
Immanent to every aspect of impermanence is the eternal. No realization is complete without recognizing this. Realization means coming to know the alive, aware ground of existence, the continuity of wisdom virtue, as your own self. This continuity gives rise to all temporary phenomena, including your own individualized experience of body, energy, and mind. Recognizing impermanence is only half-way.
The Mother, Shakti, is the creatrix. The Father, Shiva, is the light of consciousness infusing all from within. The Mother and the Father are never apart. And so you cannot expect to find the ground of your existence, your real nature, anywhere but here in the midst of life. There is no outside.
The Reality Sutras Page 4